- Web Platform Installer Released!
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If you’ve been to any presentations I’ve done recently you’ve seen how much I love talking about this tool. Very simply the Web Platform Installer (WebPI) is a tool that installs IIS7, extensions, tools, runtimes and applications in a easy to use manner.
This includes PHP, SQL Express and Visual Web Developer Express. Its never been easier to get the Microsoft Web Platform installed – just a few simple clicks.
Go to http://www.microsoft.com/web/ and click on the download the web platform link, and this will download the 80K file that kicks off the installer and from there you can pick and choose what you want to install:
But the by far coolest part of this is the ability to install popular Open Source applications such as Silverstripe and the WebPI takes care of ANY dependancies such as installing PHP and other web server requirements.
If you have an application you’d like to include in the Windows Web Application Gallery just follow these simple Windows Web Application Gallery Principles.
There are also a bunch of extensions also made available including:
o Advanced Logging 1.0 Beta
o Application Request Routing 2.0 RC
o Database Manager 1.0 RTW
o Dynamic IP Restriction 1.0 Beta
o Media Services 3.0 RTW (with Smooth Streaming)
o URL Rewrite 2.0 RC1
o FastCGI for PHP support on IIS6
o IIS7 Administration Pack
o FTP Publishing Service 7.5
o WebDav 7.5
o Web Deployment Tool 1.0 RTW
o IIS SEO Toolkit Beta 2
Sure you can install all these yourself, but the WebPI just makes it easier!
- jorke
- Announcing WebSiteSpark in Australia
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I am VERY excited to announce the launch of a new *SPARK program at Microsoft for Australia; WebSiteSpark you’ll see that the gu has already post about this.
WebSiteSpark is aimed specifically at those who are developing in the web platform and we’re giving them a jumpstart to get started on the Microsoft Platform.
The Australian launch of WebSiteSpark will be on the 8th of October at Web Directions South – Hope to see you there!
So very simply, here are the Gets and Gives:
What to we give you?
Software licenses that you can use for three years AT NO COST. Once enrolled, you can download and immediately use the following software from Microsoft:
•3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
•1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
•2 licenses of Expression Web 3
•4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
•4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
•DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)
The Windows Server and SQL Server licenses can be used for both development and production deployment. You can either self-host the servers on your own, or use the licenses with a hoster. WebsiteSpark makes it easy to find hosters who are also enrolled in the program, and who can use your licenses to provide you with either dedicated or virtual dedicated servers to host your sites on.
In addition to software, WebsiteSpark provides partner opportunities to grow and build your business through referrals and product support training.
Who can get WebSiteSpark?
This is really simple:
1.Your company builds web sites and web application on behalf of others.
2.Your company currently has less than 10 employees.
If you meet these requirements you can sign up today. As part of the enrollment process you can pick a network referral partner such as a hoster or enter a code that you have received at an event or from a Microsoftie. Once you have that code you can enrol and start downloading the software – If you’re in Australia you can send an email to me: jorkeo@microsoft.com and i’ll hook you up – otherwise webspark@microsoft.com .
After 3 years?
You have no obligation to continue using the software just a $100 fee for the use of the program. By this time we hope you would have made a decision on whether you’re happy to continue to work with Microsoft and be part of the Microsoft Partner Network.
What’s happening in Australia?
The official launch of WebSiteSpark in Australia will be at Web Directions South on the 8th of October and from the start we’ve partnered with two of Australia’s best hosting companies to provide the network services, Melbourne IT (under WebCentral) and Westnet – you’ll see more information around these guys as they give WebSiteSpark participants special offers.
So as you can see this is an AWESOME initiative – and I’m very excited to be a part of this. If you have any questions / comments – please email me: jorkeo@microsoft.com – follow me on twitter: @jorke and follow the @websitespark twitter account.
you’ll see some press releases going out today all about this :)
- jorke
- Down and Dirty with tech•ed backstage
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Sign up for the dirt and all view of what happens with the production of tech•ed 09 Australia. Subscribe to http://techedbackstage.net/ – to get the low down on what is going on. Here is the first post…
Welcome to the start of tech•ed Backstage. This blog is designed to give the world the view of what goes on in the background of running the tech•ed Australia 2009 conference from all the people the work in the Technology team and those that we interact with in developing the production.
We’re going to give the warts and all view of what’s involved in doing this focusing around the pragmatic approach of logistic and planning for this event and those related such as:
- Products and technology used for the event
- How the logistical planning is done
- How to you build a network for such and event and all the prep work.
- Tons of other information in mind numbing detail!
Plus of course lots of statistics and prediction that all go into delivering this kind of technology for the event.
So first of all some introductions for the core delivery team;
![2386560348_544b0abac1[1]](http://www.techedbackstage.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/2386560348_544b0abac11_thumb.jpg "2386560348_544b0abac1[1]")
Jorke Odolphi – Microsoft – Infrastructure Architecture Evangelist / tech•ed Technology Guy – responsible for the delivery of the infrastructure technology and ensuring and enabling that Microsoft has the best technology on show.
Other duties include attending long meetings and staying awake, breaking down barriers in delivery, helping the business understand the logistics and food/wine tasting.
(source: flickr.com/photos/heroeshappen)
![AustinPowers200px[1]](http://www.techedbackstage.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/AustinPowers200px1_thumb.png "AustinPowers200px[1]")
Codify – International Men of Mystery – These guys actually DO the delivery of all the core infrastructure to tech•ed such as network connectivity, Wireless Networks, building machines for speaker rooms and connecting everyone to the internet. Simply put if you’re going to be putting anything on the network at tech•ed these guys are involved in some form. As a result they’re slaves to the network for the event!
To protect their identity (and they’re camera shy) the picture on the right is an artists rendition.. (source wikipedia.org)
![Drevil_million_dollars[1]](http://www.techedbackstage.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Drevil_million_dollars1_thumb.jpg "Drevil_million_dollars[1]")
Jomablue – International Men of Mystery – again another group of camera shy individuals. These guys are the core of the logistics for the event. When any piece of technology is placed in a location in the event these are the guys bumping it in, plugging it in and making sure the the power is right and in fact everything is right.
To protect their identity (and they’re camera shy) the picture on the left is an artists rendition.. (source wikipedia.org)
Of course we’re only scraping the surface of what we all do, and we can’t forget all the other people we interact with such as the tech•ed core team, Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre staff and if course all the awesome staging staff. We’ll be hearing from all those people leading up to the event, so sit back take it in and tell us what you’d love to hear from the bluelit parts of tech•ed.
So check it out at http://techedbackstage.net/
- jorke
- Tech.Ed 2009 Windows 7 Experience – Netbooks for you!
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So FINALLY we can talk about a project that’s been happening for a while now. I’ve picked up a job for Tech.Ed 2009 as overall infrastructure guy so i’ve been working on ensuring that we have the best technology to deliver and awesome event. Aside from that we had a question earlier in the year which was…”what if we give every paid teched delegate a netbook with windows 7”…. While my head is still spinning from the awesomeness of this idea and all the planning we are doing, Nick Hodge has put the hard yards and pushed it through.
All documented here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/nickhodge/archive/2009/06/30/big-things-in-mini-packages.aspx
http://www.nickhodge.com/blog/archives/3143
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090630/teched-australia-attendees-free-hp-mini-windows-7/
So a BIG shout out to the hard work Nick Hodge has been working so hard on this for the past few months. Now we go into the fun part of getting them on the network and doing some awesome things. We’ve already started planning this, with a wireless survey of the Gold Coast Convention Centre - as you can see, there’s a lot of air to cover!
-jorke
- “Microsoft”.“Open Source” == “unhandled exceptions.”
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Nick Hodge and I have been talking to our local Open Source communities for the past year and we’ve finally managed to get some traction to hit the road Sam and Max style in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Microsoft and Open source? Isn’t that like cats and dogs living together? Discuss and learn what (where and why) Microsoft is embracing Open source. See which Microsoft technology can positively affect your Open source based projects, and how you can contribute. We would also like to hear your unfiltered feedback on how we should contribute, too. Come along, bring your colleagues, have some light refreshments and enjoy a relaxed conversation.
At Webdu in sydney we sat down and opened ourselves up for feedback from a community that I believe we’ve neglected for sometime. Listening to hard reality can hurt at times but I believe its a necessary pain.
So come see us in person for a relaxed evening if spirited presentations and discussions.
SYDNEY: 23 Jun 2009 - 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM AEST
City Tattersalls Club Room
The Celebrity Lounge
194 - 204 Pitt Street
Sydney
New South Wales 2000
MELBOURNE: 24 Jun 2009, 5:30 PM to 2009, 8:30 PM AEST
CQ Functions Room
Events Room 3
Level 1, 113 Queen St
Melbourne
Victoria 3000
BRISBANE: 25 Jun 2009, 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM AEST
Central Eagle Street Conference Venue Room
The Icon Theatre
175 Eagle Street
Brisbane
Queensland 4000
Australia
REGISTER HERE!
If you don’t want to go through the rego page, just drop us a line here or on @jorke / @nickhodge on twitter so we can cater for you.
- jorke
- IIS SEO Toolkit
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Again the IIS team are kicking butt in showing the value of using Windows as a web platform, this time with the IIS SEO toolkit – to bust the jargon – Internet Information Services Search Engine Optimization Toolkit.
To get it, of course the easy way is to grab the Web Platform Installer and tick the option, it’ll become part of your IIS Manager. At this stage the Toolkit will only analyse the website you have on your server.
I didn’t have any sites locally to play with, so I yanked one that is constantly seeking publicity – Michael Korhdahi’s thetweetshirt.com – I sucked down the site content using Expression Web 2 and hosted it locally on my IIS Server.
Then selected “Site Analysis” and analysed the site, which was pretty fast, since there wasn’t much content there.. and gave me a few things to look at:
Drilling down into the first option gives you a query-able interface to find rules which is kinda neat, PLUS an insane amount of detail on the actual warning itself:
I could drill down on each detail forever, but by FAR coolest feature is under the Performance Tab, where you can analyse the speed, of the content loading. Even better is that you can export this query as a CSV – which you can then import into something like Excel and graph:
So from this we can see that the delivery of the JavaScript and Jpeg’s are the least efficient part of the site…
With a few tweaks I reckon I can fix that easy enough.. just add some output caching…
<system.webServer>
<caching>
<profiles>
<add extension=".htm" policy="DontCache" kernelCachePolicy="DontCache" />
<add extension=".gif" policy="CacheUntilChange" kernelCachePolicy="CacheUntilChange" />
<add extension=".png" policy="CacheUntilChange" kernelCachePolicy="CacheUntilChange" />
<add extension=".js" policy="DontCache" kernelCachePolicy="DontCache" />
<add extension=".jpg" policy="CacheUntilChange" kernelCachePolicy="CacheUntilChange" />
</profiles>
</caching>
</system.webServer>
And we do seem to get better results.
So that’s a very fast look that analytics part of the package but there’s also the ability to create a sitemap for the spiders or bots to follow:
And then the Robots Exclusion Module that allows you to create the robots.txt file and set sitemap locations:
So all in all, a very neat little module that helps the developer setup their site to be ideal for search engines to index.
-jorke
- Old New Series – Cannon PI
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Keep watching as Cannon makes life easier for today's web developers using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer.
- jorke
- Windows 7 RC download
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get it now, now now, while it lasts - http://www.microsoft.com.au/windows7 its HOT HOT HOT!
Don’t for get to grab Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate
- jorke
- Remix Australia 09 – Register now!
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REMIX 09 – The Next Web Now, registration is open now! – check out the action packed agenda.
![remix[1]](http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/jorke/WindowsLiveWriter/RemixAustralia09Registernow_12E44/remix%5B1%5D_thumb.jpg "remix[1]")
June 11 Sydney, Star City Casino.
Register now to get the earlybird!
- jorke
- FastCGI timeout on IIS7
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Had a couple of question this week around some issues that people were experiencing from long running PHP scripts that appear to timeout/hang and eventually stop/crash and is this problem with FastCGI or the application pool settings.
Let’s take a look at the FastCGI settings in the ApplicationHost.config
<fastCgi>
<application fullPath="C:\PHP\php-cgi.exe" activityTimeout="60" instanceMaxRequests="10000">
<environmentVariables>
<environmentVariable name="PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" value="10000" />
<environmentVariable name="PHPRC" value="c:\php\" />
</environmentVariables>
</application>
</fastCgi>
You’ll the highlighted entries, the one that causes the PHP scripts to hang and stop running is activityTimeout – simply put this value defines for FastCGI to timeout when the cgi process doesn’t talk to IIS for that amount of time specified. So if you have a script that will run longer than this, make sure you adjust it appropriately. Of course, use this sensibly.
Couple other things highlighted are environment variables for PHP with FastCGI. PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS governs how many requests will be processed by PHP before the PHP recycling process happens. PHPRC tells PHP where the PHP runtime configuration (php.ini) configuration file is located for this fastcgi process.
- jorke
- “The subsystem needed to support the image type is not present"
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You might be getting this error on server 2008 R2 or in fact any x64 system. I’ve had a bunch of people getting this particularly on running 2008 server core R2 x64.
The problem occurs when the executable you are running has not been compiled for x64 AND you haven’t installed WOW64 – yeah that’s right WOW64 is now an optional component in Windows Server 2008 R2 Core – cool eh?
so to fix this just run:
start /w ocsetup.exe ServerCore-WOW64
you will need to reboot to get your WOW64 goodness..
-jorke
- linux.conf.au
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So i attended linux.conf.au (LCA) in Tassie this year, i reckon i was the only person walking around with Windows installed on my machine :) This year LCA was held at the University of Tasmania’s Sandy Bay Campus in Hobart, and you can see key media reports are here: http://www.itwire.com/component/option,com_tag/tag,linux.conf.au/tag_id,23107/
My Highlights
- some Perception change about ms evident
- Attendance by the guys at corp who are doing the hard hards in protocol documenation helped to bolster commitment – you know how much aussie tech audiences swoon at American accents..
- Great work in the community by the likes of Samba and OpenChange
- Managed to have a chat with Linus Torvalds on the way back to the Hotel (he looks much more fit than is wikipedia picture..)
- Experiencing a different community involvement and action.
- I gave out an inch of business cards, and have had many contacts back saying it was great to see us there.
My Lowlights
- Still a long way to go with being able to work cohesively, and i think with this community
- Lawrence took it on the chin to soften them up for us during the week
- History is still biting us in the ass – the amount of conversations that I had where people complained about buggy ie6 or win98...
Day -2 Monday 19th Jan Miniconfs
Lawrence Crumpton (Platform Strategy Manger) delivered the infamous “Did hell freeze over?” talking about what Microsoft is doing in the Open Source community and our strategy moving forward. As is well documented in the press ... http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22752/1090/1/0/
Most issues that were raised were quite valid, however most were coming grips with the idea the Microsoft was in the room, and didn’t have some underhanded motive to it all which led to some suspicion and revisiting history. I can only commend Lawrence for his patience during this talk, as this was truly on the front line of the field, and helped us later during the week in further conversations.
Day -1 Tuesday 20th Jan Miniconfs
I attended the “Free as in Freedom” track. Interesting things to look at IMHO;
- http://openaustralia.org - lots of respect for Matthew Launder – awesome job.
- Free culture presentation by Jessica Coates - http://linux.conf.au/wiki/index.php?n=Freedom.FreedomFighting-HowDoWeConvinceThePowersThatBeToRelaxTheirGrip
- A look at citizen journalism – Crikey.com.au – followed by a great presentation by Jeff Waugh - http://linux.conf.au/wiki/index.php?n=Freedom.WeAreTheTranslators – touched on how to make a case for technology, this was delivered fairly agnostically as well.
Day 0 Wednesday 21st Jan Official Start
Keynote by Thomas Limoncelli was delivered quite well but not the right fit for this audience as it focused primarily on how to be successful as a sysadmin, but quite well received.
Standout presentation for the day from me was from Rasmus Lerdorf from yahoo, one of the creators of PHP on PHP architecture, Scalability and Security. Great content, and demos all demonstrated on linux but after some discussion with Rasmus there are windows ports of a lot of the debugging tools.
Penguin Dinner was on that night, where a photo was auctioned for almost $30K + the beard of Bdale Garbee (CTO for OSS at HP - http://apcmag.com/Content.aspx?id=3422
Day 1 Thursday 22nd Jan
Standout presentation was “Displacing Active Directory – first Samba4 deployments” by Andrew Barlett. Main points where:
- Working with Microsoft has been extraordinarily helpful
- Documentation of the protocols is a huge step in the right direction ( resulting in a round of applause for MS - wow )
- A lot of the work on understanding what’s on the wire is no longer an issue, now the samba team is looking for Active Directory specialists to help them, as they’re not.
- A fair bit of disbelief from the audience that MS was being helpful, several times it had to be reinforced that we had voluntarily published the protocols without being required by court ruling.
The most disappointing talk Interesting/Terrible talk by OpenOffice.org (Louis Suarez-Potts) – “Where the future lies: OpenOffice.org and the ODF in the world” – A demo of the product or how odf works with it would have been nice, but apparently just playing a slideshow is demo enough... Feedback from other conference delegates was much the same in that they were very disappointed at this presentation. http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22826/1090/
Professional Networking that night was quite relaxed, and had some great conversations with many community people.
Day 2 Friday 23rd Jan
Keynote by Simon Phipps (Sun) – interesting predictions for the future, a couple of digs at microsoft and his own company, without pushing any product. I thought the best part of the presentation was when he picked up a netbook and said “put a free OS on this that doesn’t become my hobby”. Question time during this presentation brought the wrath of the conference down on a redhat representative.
Other great presentations:
- Awesome things you’ve missed in Perl – Paul Fenwick (I’m biased on Perl :) )
- OLPC in Australia – Pia Waugh – same presentation as at OSDC in Sydney, good questions from the audience, a bit of an MS smackdown about trying to run Win XP on a XO – interesting there were some audience members suggesting they try win7....
- System Admin in a large scale web hosting environment – Terri Haber (DreamHost) – (I’m biased again) a bit disappointing as Terri concentrated more on the development troubles of their Open Source scaling Disk system.
OpenChange and KDE – Bridging to Microsoft Exchange – Brad Hards – Great session on how the OpenChange team has been using the protocol documentation to develop a mail client to talk directly to MS Exchange. Demos where of a command line version doing the MAPI connections and reading/delivering email –at this stage the MAPI connector is scheduled to release mid this year as part of Evolution on KDE. My concerns for what Brad has going is that he’s testing only on Exchange 2003, and on some small infrastructure that he’s built himself. I’ve connected with him locally and we’re working out what we can do to support him testing on the latest platforms.
Closing celebrations were sponsored by Google but still had to pay for drinks?? nevermind – I got my fair share of flashing badges to hand out in the office. I had the chance here to talk to some community leaders here and they were interested in working with us in the future.
Next year
Linux Conf down under will be held in Wellington New Zealand.
- jorke
- Samsung Blackjack on Telstra NextG as a modem
-
This works on Vista and Windows 7.
Most Windows Mobile devices can be used as a network device to connect to high speed wireless networks such as Telstra NextG, by allowing Internet Connection Sharing on the Mobile Device while connected over USB.
Unfortunately with the ancient Samsung Blackjack (v1) that I have, that has the Telstra Windows Mobile 6 ROM, the Internet Connection Sharing Feature has been removed.
Rather than buying yet another gadget to use high speed wireless and since I don’t get the free phone benefits of some of my other colleagues :) , and because I travel a fair amount, I need to use my device as a high speed modem. Easy way to do this is:
On your phone: Settings, Connections select “USB”, and change the setting to “Modem” – then plug in your phone in via the datacable to your laptop (or desktop – but I’m assuming your not lugging a desktop machine travelling…)
Once you connect, Windows will look for the device drivers (it does help to be internet connected when you set this) and will install some Samsung CDMA Technologies or Samsung Mobile Modem. I have managed to get mine working on x64 which is interesting as there are no x64 drivers available from Samsung for this, so I do not condone the course of action I took to get this too work nor will I supply you the drivers I am using, all I will say is the hardware ID of the device that installed is: USB\Vid_04e8&Pid_6640&Class_02&SubClass_02
Then all you need to do is set up a dial up connection to the internet and use the following details, Dial-up number is *99# and use your mobile number as the username (don’t use mine..)
Then hit connect, you may get a couple of false starts, I found a couple people need to use a modem initialisation string like the following: at+cgdcont=1,”IP”,”telstra.internet”
Otherwise you should get something like:
and you’re connected!
- jorke
- Apache httpd/htaccess config for IE8 Compatability
-
Some great advice for infrastructure providers that may get calls from customers wondering why their sites are broken after they install IE8 and they haven’t developed their sites to standards…
The full info is here can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/hanuk/archive/2008/08/28/apache-httpd-configuration-for-ie7-standard-mode-rendering-in-ie8.aspx
But in short you can tell the browsing clients to render in IE7 standards mode at a server level or site level.
At the Server level:
1. Open httpd.conf in a text editor
2. Uncomment (or add) “LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so”
3. Add the following configuration fragment at the end of the httpd.conf file:
<IfModule headers_module>
Header set X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7
</IfModule>
4. Save httpd.conf and reload the apache config
At the site/directory level – make sure you are allowing .htaccess files to be read from each directory.
1. Add to your .htaccess file:
<IfModule headers_module>
Header set X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7
</IfModule>
Stacks more info here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/08/27/introducing-compatibility-view.aspx and here http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/06/10/introducing-ie-emulateie7.aspx
- jorke
- Developers Developers Developers – Steve Ballmer in Australia
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As part of a whirlwind visit to Sydney early next month, Steve Ballmer will be presenting Microsoft's future vision for developers in the world of software-plus-services. He'll discuss the next wave of technologies just launched at the Professional Developer Conference. There will also be a live Q&A session with Steve.
Immediately following Steve’s session, we’ll drill into the Software + Services vision even deeper with Microsoft Directors Gianpaolo Carraro and Tim Sneath, delivering sessions on “Understanding Cloud Computing” and “Amazing Software Experiences for Windows and the Web”. Although all the seats at the Sydney event are gone, we’ll be streaming live and a number of user groups are running events around the country to get together and watch the stream.
Watch the stream from here : http://www.microsoft.com.au/powertodevelopers/
Or if you are in Brisbane, watch it locally at the Queensland MSDN User Group
-jorke
